How can we re-imagine generosity as a tool for transformation?
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Join us to explore new ways of engaging in generous acts that can both "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." How do our current structures channel giving in non-threatening directions? How might generosity be unleashed as a potent means of shaking up the system and empowering radical change?
Cafe Calls this Monday, Tuesday and Thursday: Click here for times and registration.
As The Rolling Jubilee demonstrates, Occupiers are exploring alternative models of generositythat challenge the status quo and operate outside the "non-profit industrial complex." This action transforms giving to those in need into a form of protest that builds awareness of the dysfunction of our economic system.
Our conversation this week is sparked by Occupy Cafe regular Dyck Dewid of Raleigh, NCwho is working on a new initiative--The Generosity Project-- that also invites people to experience giving in a different way. The document attached below has details, but here is the essence:
You may receive a money bill of any denomination marked with a red encircled 99%. If you do, it means that this money has history of having been ‘given’ without condition, obligation or implication. Please take a moment to contemplate or notice your own reaction. Will you continue the momentum?
On this Monday's Cafe Call, we will hear more from Dyck about his inspiration and plans. This will seed a wider conversation about ways in which we might continue re-imagining generosity. On Tuesday's Connect2012 call, we invite the Occupy Cafe community to work in depth with Dyck on some key questions around the launch of The Generosity Project. And on Thursday's Occupy Heart call, we will explore ways in which our inner perspectives on generosity can either keep us in stasis or move us towards transformation.
Meanwhile, we will use this forum thread for the online conversations connected to all three Cafe Calls(rather than having three separate threads, as we have done in the past). We can begin with the following question in advance of Monday's call:
Where do you see transformational opportunities for giving that are going unmet by the "non-profit industrial complex?"
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On this Thursday's Occupy Heart call, we'll pick up the thread from Monday's Vital Conversation. Dyck opened with a powerful story about generosity expressed via, what appeared on the surface to be , different impulses. Might those two expressions of generosity actually be closer than they appeared?
Ben posted the following excerpt in the thread below...
Some thoughts on Generosity and Greed from the website of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle. An excerpt:
"Generosity is revolutionary, counter-instinctual. Our survival instinct is to care only for ourselves and our loved ones. But we can transform our relationship to that survival instinct by constantly asking ourselves, 'How can I use my life’s energy to benefit all living beings?'”
—Noah Levine
I (Jitendra writing here) fully agree with Noah that our instinctual survival mechanism can drive us, via fear, to protect the organisms closest to us, often at the expense of others. The closest being ourselves. However, that instinct, when arising from within someone in the role of parent, might choose to protect their offspring or spouse before themselves. Some might argue, this too, is a form of self preservation via family or even tribe.
However, I would like to offer the possibility that there is an equally compelling force that I call the instinct of the soul, or higher nature, that drives us to behave in a way that protects the whole of us. And generosity is one way of describing that impetus.
So, while we may need to transform our relationship with our instinctual survival coding, as I like to call it, the very driver that urges us to do so is already built in. Our inquiry of self leads us to question then, "What might support or suppress this higher instinct in ourselves? How also, might we support one another in our behaviors, policies and societal structures to fertilize a generosity/sufficiency-based world?"
Our Occupy Heart inquiry begins here:
Might generosity be a force of our true nature?
Tell stories of your personal experience: what supports and what suppresses your urge to be generous?
Image at top from Becoming Minimalist
